Die drei Tage des Condor

Good intrigue yarn about a CIA agent whose code name is Condor who is forced to flee for his life when his cover operation (called American Literature History Society) is blown and becomes into man-on-the-run . In the next seventy-two hours almost everyone he trusts will attempt to murder him ( by an organization undercover called Five Continents Import Inc. ). The bookish CIA information reader (Robert Redford) aware more than he should and he finds all of his co-workers cruelly killed. He must outwit those responsible until he figures out who he can really trust and he suddenly himself as hunted man , being only helped by a stranger woman (Faye Dunaway) .

This exciting mystery contains thrills , action , shootouts , suspense and is quite entertaining . Good performance from Robert Redford as bookish researcher working for US Intelligence office and Faye Dunaway as the innocent who Condor uses to avoid capture and shelter him . Excellent support cast as Cliff Robertson with special mention to veteran John Houseman and of course Max Von Sydow who expertly handles a vignette as cold murderer . Very good cinematography , well filmed in New York City and Washington D.C. by Owen Roizman- The exorcist- and atmospheric musical score by Dave Grusin. The motion picture is stunningly directed by the recently deceased Sydney Pollack . Sydney was an excellent director , producer and secondary actor with several hits on all kind of genres as ¨The Interpreter¨ , ¨The firm¨ , ¨Out of Africa¨ , ¨Tootsie¨, ¨Yakuza¨ and many others . Rating : Good , better than average and worthwhile watching . The flick will appeal to Robert Redford fans and thriller buffs .

Sidney Pollack is a great admirer of Alfred Hitchcock, which he also proved with "The Interpreter". Apparently he loves suspenseful thrillers and I sure hope for him that his movies will age as well as those that Hitchcock made. And I guess they do. Even though it was made thirty years ago, "Three Days of the Condor" still hasn't lost any of its power. Sure, you could call it a typical product of the seventies, but even today this movie feels up-to-date and believable.

Turner works for the American Literary Historical Society, or at least so it seems. In reality he is a CIA researcher, with the code name Condor, who gets paid to read books, in which he has to find possible scenarios that could be used in intelligence work. When he returns to his office after he went out to get lunch, he finds all his colleagues dead and he doesn't know who shot them. He immediately calls a superior who sends his section chief to get him out of there. But when the man arrives, he immediately opens fire on Turner. In an act of pure desperation - he no longer knows who he can trust - Turner kidnaps a woman he has never seen before and forces her to hide him. He will stay in her house until he can find out what exactly is going on. But even there he isn't save. He is discovered and attacked in the woman's house, but is able to kill the man. Now he knows one thing for sure: the man too had a connection to the CIA, which means that someone in the CIA must be behind all this...

I guess the best thing about this movie is the fact that it doesn't give away all its information at once. At first Turner appears to be an ordinary guy who arrives late for work. Nothing special there. But because he gradually builds up tension by slightly releasing more information, the writer knows how to keep you focused and interested. I guess the best way to describe this movie is calling it a classic spy thriller without James Bond-like locations or bad guys and and no super hero who can beat all the bad guys with a blink of an eye. No, this is a normal man who was at the wrong place at the wrong time and who now has to face an unusual and life threatening situation. I guess that's where this movie gets its strength: you can easily identify with him, even though he is a spy.

And yes, the whole concept of the movie is very seventies: the paranoia towards the government, the insecurity of not knowing who your enemies or your friends are... all give it that typical feeling. but even today this movie hasn't lost any of its power or relevance. All in all this is a very good and stylish thriller that offers plenty of tension and some very nice acting. Especially Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway were very nice to watch, but the other actors did a fine job too. Thanks to the combination of the acting, a good story and some nice camera-work, Pollack has created a movie Hitchcock might have been proud of if he had done it. That's why I give this movie a 7.5/10.

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

This is looking more and more like a period piece, dated and curious like one of those great Cold War films looks today (Failsafe or Seven Days in May). And yet it also feels like the beginnings of spy/counterspy films that are going on today, way beyond the pizazz of the early Bond films of the 1960s, and presaging the dozens since, including recent ones like the Bourne films or Syriana. It plays straight up as a suspense film, one where an almost innocent man is caught up in something huge and perplexing and awful, and we all identify with the individual against the powers of evil. Robert Redford plays the role of Joe Turner well, with the usual Redford stiffness, but believably--he reads books, after all--and sympathetically.

Putting yourself back to 1975 you have to remember that everyone was talking about, and reacting to, Watergate, and a U.S. president who had to resign from office because of it. Watergate, more than anything, started the current public roar (blossoming on the internet) about government conspiracy. Three Days of the Condor makes the government, and the CIA in particular, an almost unassailable and invisible force of spying and mistrust. Turner, by circumstance at first and then by admirable determination, fights back. He's clever as much as he is worried. He falls in love. He feels isolated but never gives up. He has close calls, and lucky escapes, and unlikely friends. He thinks of other people first.

In other words, he's a hero against the machine, and if the movie is sometimes slow, it creates a nice pace for the end, which is beautifully thought out. Director Sydney Pollack is hampered by a screenplay that alternates between awkward (Faye Dunaway's scenes) and brilliant (Redford's anti-spy character has a conversation with a hit man played by Max Von Sydow that shines), but he patches it together with an editing job that was nominated for an Oscar. And the cinematography by Owen Roizman is really nice (he shot a dozen great films from the French Connection to the Exorcist to Network). Condor is not just an entertainment, which is a saving grace, but it does also, slowly and beautifully, entertain.

Though this movie is 45 years old, the movie still holds up today and just shows that our governments are still fighting over the same things that they were in the mid-70s. Timeless. Beautiful transfer. Brilliant thriller and very fast paced. Catch it on Amazon Prime streaming

Towards the end of this film - two of the main protagonists engage in a conversation that is so telling - it could have been written yesterday and not thirty years ago.

The West has long looked to the east and its oil fields as potential targets and this film just reinforces the fact that what we think of as a new war has in fact been a raging cold war for decades. It is not and never has been about freedom –it is now and always has been a war of economic necessity. Although this film is not as renowned as many of the other paranoid spy thrillers of the 70's such as the Conversation or the Parallax View it is still a very watchable and intriguing film.

Redford is well cast as a fish out of water having to adapt his talents from the page to real life. The central relationship between Dunaway and Redford doesn't work as well as it should. She is too keen to fall for his charms and were it not Redford but a more charmless man like Hackman for example I doubt it would have worked at all.

The film is not as complex as has suggested. It is neat and easy enough to follow. It has a beguiling character that is better for my money than harder hitting films like Parallax. Redfords fight in the middle of the film is copied in a many ways by the new Bourne movie fight scenes. Indeed the double talk spy will appeal to fans of this genre. Bourne today is the nearest thing to Condor in the movies.

And Von Sydow is as always untouchable. Worth a remake but I still have a very dear place in my big movie heart for well made 70s films like this.